


je détesterai tous tes amis (ta famille aussi)

by theviolonist



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Five Times, Multi, Murder Quartet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michaela refused to even <i>think</i> the words 'finger guns.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	je détesterai tous tes amis (ta famille aussi)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [yazzyinatardis](yazzyinatardis.tumblr.com) on tumblr for the prompt: _five times the murder quartet excluded fuckboy Asher and one time they didn't._

The panting would drive him insane, Connor said. If she didn't shut up…

"You're going to what, kill her, stack up another murder on your rap sheet?" Lauren said quietly, her tone biting.

Connor jumped. On the other side of the door, Asher was still knocking. Wes pressed Rebecca closer to his chest, her face hidden against his jumper. He murmured reassurances to her softly, but his eyes were fixed on the door. Cold.

"I know you're in there," Asher growled, his voice the usual blend of smug and annoyed. "Just open up, for fuck's sake."

Michaela hadn't chosen the good corner to curl up in. The corpse's dead eyes were open, fixed on her side of the room. If Asher came in he would only see the wound, gaping and messy, the blood slowly soaking the carpet.

Laurel bent down to pick up the trophy. She weighed it in her hand; then she turned, catching Wes' eyes. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

It was too late when Connor realized what they were doing.

"Open the door, Connor," Laurel said, and there was no choice.

He took a step forward.

*

Michaela sidled up to Connor with what he assumed she thought was a grin; in reality it was more like a grimace, but he gave her points for trying—not to mention that this was the most attention she'd paid him since the Aiden thing. Not that any of that was his fault: how many years had Aiden had to disclose their little tryst to fucking  _fiancé_? He had it coming, really. Still, Michaela was useful, sharp and uncompromising. If they weren't in a competition to the death Connor supposed they could have been —not friends, but the kind of acquaintances who spent their Friday nights judging other people over martinis.

"Asher left his bag on the chair," she said, which was about the last thing Connor expected. "Don't you think—"

"It would be so easy to take a peek?" Connor smirked.

"He should be more careful with his things," said Michaela primly. "It's only a matter of time before he forgets some crucial piece of evidence somewhere he shouldn't. We'd be doing him a favor."

Wes gave them an amused look over his phone. He didn't seem worried about torts all that much either, for all he was the fifth wheel to their chariot.

" _Qui va à la chasse perd sa place_ ," Connor said. Michaela's eyes went round and —was that a smidgeon of respect? "I dated a French guy once. Pay attention," he said as he darted his hand forward, smiling in the face of her glare, "you could learn something."

Laurel's hand stopped his fingers before he could touch the satchel. "That is theft," she said.

Connor rolled his eyes. "No shit." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I mean, you could give us  _your_ notes, save everyone the trouble."

"I thought you wanted to be a lawyer. Isn't that about defending people's rights and possessions?"

Connor couldn't help but turn to Michaela, and she returned his is-she-serious glance. Honestly. What was this, kindergarten? "Uh, no. A, it's about making a ton of money, and b, our very own prom queen is right, goodwill is going to be pretty useless if we fail torts. You're a communist, aren't you? What's wrong with a little friendly cooperation?"

Unexpectedly, Laurel smiled. "Cooperation?" just as Asher shouted through the bathroom door, "How about one of you girls give me a hand?" and laughed at his own terrible joke, as usual.

"What's in it for me?" Laurel said. Michaela made eyes at her, trying to look pitiful, and just managed proud.

Connor opened his mouth, already trying to spin a lie that would sound good —Laurel  _was_ a do-gooder at heart, after all— but Wes saved him the trouble. He clucked his tongue and they all turned around —which, what? Connor was pretty sure none of them even  _liked_ the guy— only to find him, legs crossed, Asher's torts copies fanned between his fingers.

"You're right," he said off-handedly to Connor as he handed them around, "there's no use wanting to save the world if you can't make it through the exam."

Connor smirked. "Annalise would be proud," and Wes smiled back at him, almost  _wholesome_. The ruthless thing was kind of attractive on him, actually. And he looked like an open-minded guy. Huh.

It was only at the end of the day, when the dawn started scraping the edge of the sky and Annalise finally saw fit to let them go, that Asher noticed his missing satchel. He frowned comically, his face contracting like a cartoon character's. "What the hell? I know you guys aren't that desperate."

Only Wes deigned to cuff his shoulder amicably, passing him on his way out. "Actually I think you left it in that office building we were at earlier, man, sorry." Connor wasn't about to do something as dumb as look around and share a look with the others, but he couldn't help but hide a smirk in his scarf, and he was pretty sure he saw Michaela do a half-twirl movement as she shimmied into her chauffeured car.

On his way to Oliver's he remembered something the guy in line behind him for the interviews —he hadn't made it, actually, which made Connor feel vindictive and triumphant— had told him about making friends in law schools. Something about hermit crabs.

*

"Did you know hermit crabs eat each other?"

"Shut up, Asher," said Michaela without looking up from the court minutes, which was becoming usual enough for the rest of them not to even pay attention. Unfortunately, Asher didn't either.

"No, no, they do. It's like, so gross. If you put them in a tank together they'll just cannibalize each other. How weird is that?"

Michaela waited for the inevitable law school metaphor, but Asher seemed content to just dwell on the imagined carnage, beatifically staring at the wall. Michaela wondered how he even managed to stay on the team, honestly. Maybe his innate douche-ness came with powers of deduction or something.

"Something funny, Pratt?" Connor bit next to her.

"The way you're not getting anywhere with witness prep is pretty hilarious, actually."

Wes rolled his eyes at the other end of the table. He probably thought it was subtle, too, but it really wasn't. Or maybe Michaela was just too good at looking; it had put her in a few uncomfortable situations when she was younger and didn't know when to shut up. Uncle Brett had never really recovered from that bombshell —and the following divorce— when she was nine. (Was it really her fault, though, if he couldn't straighten his collar after his extramarital trysts in the restaurant bathroom? That much cliché had to be punished.)

Laurel smiled at him.

Michaela pointedly cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, would you two like a hotel room? I can't work with that much sexual tension, it's even worse than Frank creeping on Laurel every time they're the same room. Besides, Wes, don't you have your murderess waiting at home?"

"Rebecca," said Wes without blinking. "And she's our client."

"Like that's ever stopped anyone."

It was a miracle, actually that they got any work done when they spent so much time sniping at each other. Michaela couldn't even bring herself to really dislike any of them anymore, except maybe Asher: it was hard to dislike people who existed around you so pervasively that one morning you ended up going into Starbucks and randomly remembering their order, and thinking, who drinks chai tea anyway?

Dropping her off on the first day —the first and only time he'd done that—, her father had told her, "You've got to be tough, baby girl. Some of those people you're going to be stuck with for all your life, whether you like it or not. They're the people you're going to go to when you need to bury a body, you'll see."

Michaela had faked a gasp, pressing a hand to her mouth. She liked the cold bite of metal on her skin, a reminder of the diamond glaring out on the other side. "Dad!" and he'd laughed.

The first day she'd despised them all almost violently, but now she looked at them and she could almost imagine it: Wes standing deceptively straight at the prosecution table, Laurel with her sideways smile, scandal springing in Connor's step, hushed secrets and favors to be kept.

She surprised herself when, in the hallway of Annalise's house —God, she saw that wallpaper in her dreams—, she said, "There's an Italian restaurant around the corner."

A kind of hushed silence fell on them. In the next room, Asher was getting his stuff noisily.

"Do you think we're…  _friends_?" Connor said after a while, eyebrows raised, exaggerating the enunciation on friends like he thought she was a moron. Laurel seemed to simultaneously agree and want to slap him.

"Please," Michaela said. Cold disdain worked better on Connor; he didhave ice running in his veins, probably. "I'd just rather review the entire case over arrabiata and avoid our daily humiliation by Annalise, that's all. But go ahead if you'd rather—God know I'll make more use of that trophy than you would."

Asher draped his arms over Wes and Connor's shoulders, grinning. "Are you guys having a playdate? Aww." Wes shifted away at the same time as Connor picked Asher's arm off his shoulder as though it were a trail of slime. Asher didn't even seem to notice; he just leered. "Or wait, is it an  _adult_ playdate? I could be into that."

"You're a real comedian," Michaela said in the tone she usually reserved for gross drunk men commenting on her outfit and/or skin color.

"You know it, baby." And were those— no. Michaela refused to even  _think_ the words 'finger guns.'

By the time Asher had —mercifully— swaggered out the door, the others followed her without a word. Nothing like mutual hatred for a third party to bring people together, Michaela thought triumphantly. She certainly wasn't going to be the one left out when they made it to the top, that was for sure.

*

"Just… don't," Wes said when he got tired of witnessing the elaborate choreography of longing looks.

Laurel tore her eyes away from Frank to glare at him. "Sorry?" She played the ice queen pretty well too, actually —too bad Michaela was basically born for the role.

Wes shrugged. "He's an asshole. Trust me, he's gonna screw you over the first time he gets."

Laurel gave him an oblique look, but he held her gaze. It was the truth, after all, and Khan was a nice guy. Guys like Frank were bad news, always had been. Wes lifted his beer a little in toast. Laurel seemed to hesitate for a second, then knocked her glass against his.

They watched the news in silence for a little while, the buzz of ambient conversation drowning out the horrible commentary so that it was only the images, black guy in handcuffs, murdered white girl, war in some Middle-East country, the usual set-up.

"Since when are you the expert on office politics anyway?"

If he was Connor, Wes probably would've said something like,  _have you seen the way Annalise looks at me?_ He was keeping that one up his sleeve, though.

"My mom used to date shady types when me and my sister were kids," he shrugged. "Corrupt lawyer was a favorite."

Laurel nodded. She looked faintly awkward, unsure if she should offer commiseration.

"It's fine," Wes said to save her the trouble. "It's not like it ruined my life or anything. Jess is at MIT— she probably won't end up on the street because of the trauma either."

Laurel laughed. She looked pretty when she laughed, Wes noticed absent-mindedly. Doing this job was 90% percent about maintaining a good poker face, but it got kind of exhausting after a while.

"Hey," he said, gulping down the rest of his beer for courage. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"You can ask," Laurel said, looking somewhere behind him. Wes twisted to look too, and smiled: Michaela and Connor doing shots, pretending they weren't friends again. It was getting ridiculous, especially since Wes didn't think he'd ever seen two people more well-suited for each other.

"Yeah," he said when he turned back, and Laurel was smirking into her glass. It was nice, the way they understood each other. She would make a good lawyer, and at least she had a moral compass, even though she only used it half the time. Morals took a backseat when you worked for Annalise Keating, that was clear enough.

Laurel raised an expectant eyebrow.

"Sorry," Wes said with the awkward half-smile that worked even on his cranky landlady. "It's just… Becca still can't go out because of the publicity the case is getting. She gets groceries delivered and stuff, but it's just kind of… lonely, I guess?"

"Becca?"

Wes cocked his head. "She spends a lot of time at my place. Like I said, lonely."

Laurel snickered. "And you're giving  _me_ advice on my love life. At least I'm not banging a suspected murderer." She gestured at Connor and Michaela over his shoulder, beckoning them over, then turned back to him. "Sure. I'll go visit her, bring her cookies or something."

"She'll probably slam the door in your face if you do that," Connor put his hands up to stay Laurel's reproach, "just saying."

"What are you losers doing here?" Connor said loudly, leaning against Wes's shoulder. His breath smelled of vodka. "I thought you were in bed by nine pm like good little girls and boys. Are you breaking curfew?"

Laurel ignored him. "I need to purge my brain of this case," she told Michaela, who nodded. Defending child molesters was always gruesome. Well—innocent until proven guilty, and obviously that hadn't happened since they were here, celebrating. Still, some of what they'd buried was pretty damning.

"So, clubbing?" Laurel said. "There's this—"

"I wanna go to a rave," Connor whined, leaning more heavily on Wes. Laurel snapped a picture when he wasn't looking. Wes hid a smile in his hand. Oh, he was going to hate that in the morning.

"Your  _life_ is a rave, Connor," Michaela sneered, not as meanly as she would have a month before.

Wes stood up, smoothing a few bills over the counter. Frank was gone, thank God. He probably would've insisted to follow them for the purpose of 'education' or something. "Are we going or what?"

He held the taxi door open for Michaela, and she raised her face towards him, surprised for a second before she slid into the car.

"Ladykiller," Connor crooned at his back. He let out a tiny giggle.

Wes shook his head, amused despite himself. "Shut up and get in the cab."

Pressed against Laurel in the car he spared a second to think about Rebecca, how he should've gone home and watched some bad reality TV show with her and tried to worm some more secrets out of her. It didn't even make him as sick with guilt as he would've thought.

He leaned closer to Laurel. Her eyelashes fanned darkly on her cheek, and she was looking at the road, the yellow blur of headlights, buildings flashing on the sides. "Better than flirting with Frank, don't you think?"

She didn't look at him, but he could see a smile slowly quirking her mouth. "We'll see. The night is young," she said, and opened the window, the city lights swallowing up the glint in her eyes.

*

Laurel hugged the sheet closer to her chest. "Well," she said, as matter-of-fact as she could make it. She was still a little out of breath. "That happened."

Michaela turned to her with what Laurel had come to know as her crazy eyes. They usually surfaced right around midterms. "Wrong," she said, holding one finger up, as though explaining basic arithmetic to a four-year-old. "This didn't happen.  _This_ ," she pointed at the unmade bed, "was a mistake, and it will never happen again, or be mentioned,  _ever_ , or…"

Laurel smiled. "Or what?" If there was something she'd been careful about, it was keeping a hold on anything that could be construed as potential blackmail material. She'd gotten into that class for a reason, no matter what Michaela thought.

"I'm engaged, Laurel," said Michaela, her voice oscillating between pleading and menacing.

"Relax, I'm not going to tell anyone. It's not like I want my sex life to become gossip fodder for the university either—I'm not Connor."

Michaela's face fell with relief, but she didn't say anything. Laurel suspected torture would be insufficient to get her to express gratitude—she probably didn't even know how.

"Maybe you should mention it to Aiden, though," she said, despite herself. "Didn't you freak out when you found out about him and Connor?"

"That was different," Michaela said tightly. She started rolling her tights up her legs and Laurel got the urge to run her hands over her skin again. Probably not a good idea, though. "Now we're even."

Laurel couldn't even begin to understand the logic in that statement, but it wasn't like Michaela was going to listen to her advice anyway. She opened her mouth to say something about going back to the university when the door slipped open. Connor's eyebrows shot up; right behind him, Wes's mouth dropped open in a soft 'o'. Leaden silence fell on the room.

"Is this…" Connor let out a hysterical peal of laughter. "Did you actually hook up in a  _client_ 's bed? This is just too good."

Laurel rolled her eyes at him. She looked over to check if Michaela was okay, but she just looked frozen, her hands still on her thigh, white-joined fingers clutching the soft fabric. Shit.

"Last one at the house gets to suck my dick for the next month!" Asher called crudely from down the stairs. Laurel screwed her face up in secondhand embarrassment. The front door slammed.

"Um," said Wes after a long stretch of excruciatingly awkward silence. "Maybe we should just…" he tugged at Connor's sleeve to get him to follow him out of the room.

"No way," said Connor emphatically, his mouth still quirked in a giant smirk. "This is  _prime_ blackmail material, did you learn nothing from Annalise? Keep your friends close, all that bullshit."

He took his phone out, but before he could do anything Michaela had slapped it out of his hand, livid. It ricocheted on the carpet. "If you do anything, I swear to God, I will destroy you so thoroughly that even your IT boyfriend won't want to come near you."

Connor held his hands up, hip cocked to the side. "Wow, calm down. I'm not the one banging Laurel in an  _arsonist_ 's bed."

Michaela pulled up her tights in an impressively graceful shimmy. "Momentary lapse of judgment," she said, flipping her hair back disdainfully. Laurel didn't bother to be offended.

She looked up to share her amusement with Wes, but his eyes were lost somewhere between her collarbones and where her legs were hidden under the covers. The sheet had slipped a little. Laurel raised an eyebrow and Wes looked away, blushing.

"Well," said Connor, handing Michaela her wedding ring with a smirk, "not that this wasn't super entertaining, but we should go back before Annalise eviscerates us."

Michaela shook her head, but followed him out, chin too high. Laurel watched them slowly stream out the door.  _How_  close were you supposed to keep your friends, exactly?

*

Connor ducked his head. "Just go away, Asher!" he yelled. He turned back to Wes. "That guy is the worst."

Wes crossed his arms behind his head, grinning. "He's not that bad." Michaela slapped him on the arm. "Okay, he is that bad. He's kinda hot, though, right?"

"Urgh," Laurel said, rolling off his torso. "I can't keep kissing you if you're gonna say stuff like that. It's like you turned into Connor or something."

"Please," Connor said. "I have way better taste than that, thank you."

"You troll for cock on Grindr, it's not exactly the epitome of class," Michaela snarked.

"Well, at least  _I_ know how to have fun," Connor shot back, but he laughed when Michaela gestured to her own body, one eyebrow raised.

"Touché," he said.

Laurel hooked a finger on Micheala's bra strap, just for the hell of it. She really did have the best lingerie.

Asher banged on the door more time, because ignoring a hint even when it gogo-danced in front of his face was one of his talents —that and crass jokes. "Open the door, you shits."

Wes hooked his calf around Connor's. "We should let him in. Maybe if he actually has sex he won't talk about it so much."

"Is four not enough for you?" Michaela scoffed.

"I'm just saying," Wes continued casually, as though he hadn't heard her, "it's probably not something he'd like going public, either. Could be useful."

Connor whistled. "Two birds with one stone, nice."

Michaela was still frowning. "How do you even know he'd say yes?" But she didn't sound convinced. To be fair, Asher was the opposite of subtle, and it's not like she didn't have money in the pool about when he was going to give up and drag Connor into a file cabinet.

"If he objects to anyone, it'll probably be me," Wes said, still grinning. It was a gift, to still be able to look so  _nice_ while proposing what was basically an orgy. "How about this: if he says no, I'll go to the torts lectures on my own and give you my notes for the next semester."

"It's like you really want to sleep with him or something," Connor said with an exaggerated grimace. Wes just smiled.

"No pain, no gain," he said.

Connor smirked at Michaela and they did their strange eye thing for a few seconds before Connor leaned in and kissed her, his hand sliding on her jaw. When he pulled back he slipped off the bed, twisting a sheet around his waist.

Michaela leaned back on her elbows. "Sure, why not."

Wes quirked his eyebrows at Laurel. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She got comfortable between Michaela and Wes, watching as Connor walked to the door. He stilled with a hand on the doorknob, turning back to them.

"Open the door, Connor," Laurel said.

 


End file.
